Digest of Biblical Civil Law

Consent to murder is to be a party to murder and requires the death penalty, based on (1) Ps. 50:18’s elaboration of Lev. 19:16: Lev. 19:16 commands, “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor,” and Ps. 50 further expands on the idea of “standing idly by,” indicating that it constitutes actual consent to the evil being perpetrated. (2) Saul of Tarsus’s consent to Stephen’s stoning at Acts 8:1 and his later application of this law to himself at Acts 22:20 when he confessed that “when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto his death” (to stand by Stephen’s blood was to consent to his death); (3) Christ’s charge to the scribes that, “you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed the prophets and you build their tombs” (Luke 11:48), which is the ground upon which He added, “the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world will be charged against you” (Luke 11:50), proving that consent to murder is to be party to murder, for which reason Christ imposed the penalty for murder on the consenters in this passage.
- Martin G. Selbrede, National Defense and the Bible, (November 20, 2008), at http://www.chalcedon.edu/papers/NationalDefense.pdf .